Rachel Blum

I do things. Many things. I speak for nobody but myself, especially not for my employer.

Former blue check.

@[email protected]
she/her. SJW. Queer.

[Rachel Blum @groby]

Not a dilemma at all. A society that would burn its weakest on the pyre for the sake of maintaining wealth is not a society worth saving.

[Alexander Downer @AlexanderDowner]

We either save avoidable deaths & destroy society OR accept avoidable deaths & save society. The moral dilemma of our time.

[Rachel Blum @groby]

@dwlz I suppose. I'd likely choose "never" if I had to explain it as well - the number of people who are willing to indulge in parsing RFCs for the nuanced answer is small.

(I guess a better answer would be "You probably shouldn't, but it's complicated - pull up a chair" ;)

[Rachel Blum @groby]

@jwatte @SebAaltonen I last called setjmp() in 1992, so that sounds like a pleasant proposal ;)

[Rachel Blum @groby]

@alex_peys I wonder what Dwarkesh's audience demographics are.

[Rachel Blum @groby]

One, you don't actually find out why you get rejected, so it's probably made up.

Two, coalesce is a simple function. "I didn't remember the syntax for function calling" makes you sound a bit like an idiot, so probably right choice for Ant.

[ᴛᴏʟʟʏ ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) @tolly_xyz]

>"AI will write 100% of the code"
>asking these sorts of braindead interview questions

what did dario mean by this?

[Rachel Blum @groby]

New success strategy in large companies: Token arbitrage.

[Negligible Capital @negligible_cap]

*UBER SETS $1,500 MONTHLY CAP ON SOME AI CODING TOOLS FOR STAFF

$UBER officially reeling in the Claude budget after blowing their AI budget earlier this year.

Undoubtedly more companies to follow

[Rachel Blum @groby]

@nlw Fun fact: That requires an efficiency metric, which software engineering quite famously doesn't have.

Or, alternative, empowering managers to make a judgment call. Which will be undermined by endless clamor for "de-biasing" that judgment, plus "player-coaches" mumblings.

[Rachel Blum @groby]

@GergelyOrosz It goes together with "we're so happy extremely highly paid folks like our execs spend time coding. So much value!" when coding got cheaper than ever.

Together with the still held belief that execs generate massively more value than anybody else and thus should be highly paid.

[Rachel Blum @groby]

@hthieblot https://t.co/G6tStzY9YM

https://t.co/Dyx7qas7K9

[Rachel Blum @groby]

@GermanSimply_ A. Unless you're in the Eifel, then it's "Trekkafaaahn!"

[Rachel Blum @groby]

Presupposes people can read a bill or follow a closing argument today, or could 20 years ago.

We've overcomplicated both long ago, and most people with lives do not want to invest in it.

(No, it's not good, but the fault lies with our legal system, not the people)

[Dale Chu @Dale_Chu]

“The students who cannot read a 20-page article today are the voters who will not be able to read a bill, or the jurors who cannot follow a closing argument, tomorrow.”

[Rachel Blum @groby]

My wife and I debating hair tie color: "Green". "No, yellow".

Like proper 21st century citizens we ask AI.

The AI, smart cookie that it is: "Oh, totes chartreuse. Right on the line between bright lime and neon yellow. Not taking sides in your fights, do I look stupid?"

[Rachel Blum @groby]

The more important question: Who thought anybody in their right mind would value Saudi Arabia-Cap Verde at over $200, ever?

(Yes, Saudis and Cap Verdians, I know. But that will fill one block)

[Florian Ederer @florianederer]

I believe we now have evidence of FIFA's World Cup ticketing shell game: FIFA is colluding with third-party resale platforms for its own supply management.

Look at this SeatGeek map (secondary market!) for Saudi Arabia vs Cape Verde. The circled areas are not random single resale tickets, but large, contiguous blocks of seats: entire rows and swaths in sections 101/102, 112/113, 119/120, 134–137, 139, ...

The blue circles appeared weeks ago, then the purple blocks suddenly showed up a day or two ago, and the red blocks seem to have appeared recently too.

That's not what ordinary fan or even commercial scalper resale looks like who resell pairs, fours, and scattered seats. Instead, this looks like inventory being dumped in bulk onto secondary markets, at prices below FIFA's official site.

Why doesn't FIFA just lower prices on its own site Probably because official price cuts could trigger refund demands, chargebacks, or consumer-protection headaches from fans who already bought at much higher prices.

Instead FIFA keeps official prices high, avoids openly admitting the market-clearing price is lower, and moves unsold inventory through third-party resale platforms instead.

[Rachel Blum @groby]

One of the priceless use cases of LLMs: "Why the hell does this ONE pdf file not print properly".

10 minutes of tokens and 7 one-off scripts later: "Because your printer and macOS have issues with type 1C fonts - which this doc embeds"

Printers still crap, news at 11.

[Rachel Blum @groby]

@jwatte A hero indeed. But alas, he's the hero of a greek tragedy - Apple's ability to make WiFi horrible makes this a task of Sisyphean proportions.

(If you want to cry, try running latency sensitive workloads, and then open a second Apple device next to your machine.)

[Rachel Blum @groby]

@Noahpinion It does indeed. And maybe some people also need to hear that what people say in a survey they would do is very much "something I imagine happening".

[Rachel Blum @groby]

For better or worse, models have distinct "personalities". That matters both in enterprise (use cases built around specific behavior) and in consumer (emotional attachment).

That means there's incentive to keep old models running, counterbalanced by the drag generated.

[Rachel Blum @groby]

@valigo The assumption that people would roast him publicly, but reply privately, is... somewhat optimistic.

If he wants to hire with those requirements, he better bring an excellent business case and an outstanding equity package.

[Rachel Blum @groby]

@thinkingshivers Because they're overvalued, and the first one to get to IPO still gets the naive market.

[Rachel Blum @groby]

@staysaasy The really funny thing is that most people who really, really want to start a fire in the fire pit of their AirBnB have absolutely no fucking clue how to actually start or tend one.

Seems like ev-psych can create the desire to do, but not the desire to learn.